The god who built the land
gave it away.

Okuninushi appears in the latter half of the Kojiki's first volume as the hero of what is often called the "Izumo Cycle." His story begins as one of trial: bullied by a host of brother gods known as the Yasogami, he is killed twice and revived both times through his mother's power. He then travels to the Nenokatasukuni, the underworld realm, where he overcomes trials set by Susanoo and is formally granted the name "Okuninushi" — the Great Land Master — along with the power needed to build a nation.

A crucial partner in that nation-building is the tiny god Sukunabikona, who arrives by boat from across the sea. Together with him, Okuninushi brings rice cultivation, medicine, and magical arts to the land, building what comes to be called "Toyoashihara no Mizuho no Kuni" — the Land of Fresh Rice Ears in the Reed Plain — a fertile land where people could live and thrive. His gentler side as the god who saved the White Hare of Inaba is also part of the prelude to this nation-building story.

Looking down on the land of Ashihara-no-Nakatsukuni that Okuninushi had built, Amaterasu in Takamagahara decided "this land should be ruled by my own child," and sent messengers demanding that it be ceded. After several rounds of negotiation, the Kojiki tells us, the warrior god Takemikazuchi finally descended to Inasa Beach in Izumo and pressed Okuninushi to hand over the land.

Okuninushi himself agreed to cede the land, but left the decision to his sons, Kotoshironushi and Takeminakata. Kotoshironushi consented and withdrew from view, while Takeminakata challenged Takemikazuchi to a trial of strength, lost, and fled all the way to the province of Shinano (Suwa), where he settled. This Takeminakata is regarded as the deity now enshrined at Suwa Taisha.

What Okuninushi asked for here was "a palace built the same way the child of the heavenly gods would dwell — with pillars sunk so deep they reach the bedrock, and chigi raised so high they touch Takamagahara." Izumo Taisha's own official account treats this episode as the origin of the shrine's founding. A story of submission through the ceding of the land, and yet, as its price, a magnificent hall said to be the greatest in Japan was built — that arc speaks volumes about the character of Izumo Taisha itself.

To Okuninushi, who had ceded the land, Amaterasu is said to have charged him with governing the unseen world and guiding people's happiness through the spiritual power of "musubi" — bonds or connections — at work within it, as Izumo Taisha explains it. For Okuninushi, who over the course of building the nation is said to have taught people everything from farming, fishing, and industry to medicine, this power of musubi is not some later add-on, but a natural extension of his character as the god of nation-building itself.

The image widely embraced today of the "god of matchmaking" does not refer only to romantic bonds between men and women. According to Izumo Taisha's own explanation, it refers more broadly to "precious bonds that allow all living things to flourish together" — bonds between people, between people and their work, between people and the land. As the god who guides all these good connections, Okuninushi continues to draw worshippers to this day.

Okuninushi is said to be a descendant (or, in some tellings, the son) of Susanoo. The story of this god — exiled from Takamagahara and the slayer of Yamata-no-Orochi in Izumo — is itself an essential chapter of the Izumo Cycle. We follow it on the next page.